Communication, and many facets of life that involve communication, has been greatly impacted by the Internet. The Internet enables information to be communicated between two people and/or entities quickly and relatively easily. The Internet includes many network nodes that are linked together such that information may be transferred between and among them. Some network nodes may be routers that propagate a packet from one link to another, may be individual client computers, may be personal networks for different entities (e.g., intranets for businesses), and so forth.
For this personal network case, as well as others, packets arriving at an Internet node or nodes are distributed to other nodes within the personal network. Such a personal network may be formed, for example, from a set of servers that can each work on packets that arrive at the personal network. A business, a university, a government office, etc. may receive many packets in a short timeframe at its personal network. In order to respond in a timely manner and to reduce the likelihood of rejection or loss of arriving packets, the personal network may rely on multiple servers that can each work on the arriving packets simultaneously.
The arriving packets are often inquiries pertaining to certain information, such as a document, a catalog item, a web page, and so forth. The arriving packets can also pertain to an economic transaction between a customer and a merchant. Other purposes for the packets of a packet-based communication are possible. Regardless, the arriving packets are distributed among different servers of a set of servers to accommodate a rapid arrival of the packets and/or complex communication exchanges.
The distribution of arriving packets among different servers of a set of servers is often termed network load balancing. In other words, a load balancing operation may be performed on packets as they arrive at a node or nodes of the Internet when the node or nodes constitute a personal network and/or when they connect the personal network to the Internet.
Such a load balancing operation is accomplished using dedicated hardware that fronts the personal network at the node or nodes that connect the personal network to the Internet and/or that provide a presence for the personal network on the Internet. The physical hardware that performs the load balancing operation is usually duplicated in its entirety to realize redundancy and improve availability of the load balancing operation. To increase capacity for load balancing operations, more-powerful hardware that replicates the entirety of the previous load balancing hardware, and thus the operational capability thereof, is substituted for the previous load balancing hardware. Such scaling up of the load balancing operational capabilities is therefore confined to increasing the power of the hardware via substitution thereof.
To implement a load balancing operation, the hardware usually performs a round robin distribution of arriving connection requests. In other words, arriving connection requests are distributed to servers of a set of servers in a linear, repeating manner with a single connection request being distributed to each server. This round-robin load balancing distribution of connections is typically utilized irrespective of the condition of the personal network or the nature of an arriving connection request. If a load balancing operation does extend beyond a round robin distribution, these other factors are only considered to the extent that they may be inferred from network traffic and/or from a congestion level of the personal network.
Accordingly, there is a need for schemes and/or techniques that improve network load balancing and/or the options associated therewith.